Windows Phone Central Reader's Roundup: Games

Last week we posed the question, "What is your recommendation on Windows Phone games?" and you, our readers, tossed out your top three gaming recommendations. We tallied up all the recommendations and this week's roundup highlights the top five games from these recommendations.

The results weren't too surprising but dragon themed games scored two of the top slots. The other three included two Xbox titles and one game that is a gaming library within itself. If you didn't get a chance to offer your recommendations in the WPCentral Forums discussion, feel free to sound off below in the comments.

Wordament (free): The Xbox Windows Phone game Wordament seems to make an appearance on every roundup or best of list for Windows Phone gaming. The boggle styled game started out as a popular independent game and exploded when it transformed into an Xbox title.

Wordament is an online game where you compete against other Wordament players to see who can score the most points solving a word puzzle. The game has you creating words by connecting letters on a 4x4 grid. Each round is two minutes and each letter has its own point value.

Wordament is a great game for short bits of time as well as marathon gaming sessions. Wordament is a free Xbox game for your Windows Phone that you can pick up here at the Windows Phone Store.

Fruit Ninja (trial/$.99): Fruit Ninja may have been around long enough to be classified as a Classic Windows Phone game. Classic or not, it's a fun, entertaining game for your Windows Phone.

For those not familiar with Fruit Ninja, it is a Xbox Windows Phone game that has you slicing and dicing fruit as it's tossed in the air. Fruit Ninja has three game modes, Xbox Live achievements, leaderboards and unlockable content.

You swipe at the screen to simulate your ninja sword slicing action as the fruit is tossed up on the screen. In classic mode, any fruit missed costs you a strike and three strikes ends the game. In Zen Mode you have ninety seconds to slice as much fruit as possible for score (you won't be penalized for missed fruit). Arcade mode is much like Zen Mode but you have sixty seconds to slice the fruit. You do have bonus fruit that will slow the game or activate a fruit frenzy.

Combinations or multiple fruit sliced in a single stroke will earn you bonus points and bombs are thrown in the mix to make Fruit Ninja more challenging. Hint... don't slice the bombs.

While Fruit Ninja has been around for a while, it's still a challenging, entertaining game for your Windows Phone. There is a free trial available with the full version of Fruit Ninja running $.99. You can find Fruit Ninjahere at the Windows Phone Store.

Crimson Dragon: Side Story (trial/$.99): Our dragon influence begins with Crimson Dragon: Side Story, one the more recent Xbox Windows Phone gaming titles.

Crimson Dragon is a fantasy shooter game where you control dragons to defeat various enemies on the planet Draco. Virtual flight controls sit at the bottom left corner of the screen and you simply tap the screen at the targets you want your dragon to fire at.

As you battle your way through the game your dragon earns experience which in turn unlocks skills. Crimson Dragon has over 170 skills to unlock and you can even breed new dragons as you advance through the game.

Additionally, you can earn bonus items by using your Windows Phone location services. The further you physically travel outside of game play, the more jewels you earn which are used to unlock skills.

Nicely animated with challenging, fast paced, game play Crimson Dragon: Side Story is worth a try. There is a trial version available and the full version of Crimson Dragon is currently running $.99.

Dragon's Blade (free/$.99): Dragon's Blade is a turn based, role playing game for your Windows Phone. It has a bit of a retro feel to it reminiscent of Zelda.

The game contains seven classes of characters that includes warrior, templar, thief, juggernaut, archer, sorcerer and cleric. Once you've created your party of adventurers, you wander about slaying monsters and exploring dungeons.

There is an online component that allows you to chat and interact with other Dragon's Blade players.

As your character's experience grows, they build in strength and skills as you would see in any RPG games. All totaled there is about 60 hours of game play with Dragon's Blade. Plenty dragon slaying, treasure hunting gaming.

There are two versions of Dragon's Blade available over at the Windows Phone Store. There is Dragon's Blade which is an ad-supported version and Dragon's Blade DX which is ad free.

Taptitude (free): Taptitude is your one stop shop for mini-games. It is a collection of over seventy games ranging from Mahjong to Black Jack to Sudoku to Slots. Taptitude is a penny arcade of sorts for your Windows Phone and is a great choice for challenging games to pass the time with.

Games are sorted in Tiers that are progressively unlocked as you earn gaming stars. You earn gaming stars by play the games in the lower tiers.

You also have features such as weekly codes that can be used to unlock coins and upgrades, leaderboards and achievements. Coins can be used to buy credits, which in turn can be used to unlock games that are in locked tiers.

While there are over seventy games to the Taptitude collection now, more games are added on a weekly basis. To help keep you up to date on things, there is a Message board (accessed through the main menu) for Taptitude. Messages include information on updates, new games and a Redeem Riddle whose answer can be redeemed to unlock coins and upgrades.

Taptitude has a healthy collection of challenging games that continues to grow. Taptitude is a free, ad-supported game for your Windows Phone that you can snatch up here at the Windows Phone Store.

We'd like to thank everyone for participating in this un-scientific straw poll on Windows Phone games. We'll have more Reader's Roundups in the future but in the meantime, if you've got a gaming recommendation to share... toss it out in the comments or head on over to the WPCentral Forums and strike up a discussion there.